Relatively recently, there has been a push to rethink how electric power is provided to consumers. Conventionally, relatively large power plants burn fossil fuels to provide electric power to consumers. These power plants are typically controlled by private entities that bill consumers as a function of an amount of power utilized by the consumers over some time period. In the conventional power grid, suppliers provide a seemingly infinite amount of energy to consumers, such that consumers can vary their demands for electric power, and the supplier meets the varying demands. Thus, consumers can simply request power (by turning on and off devices, by running air-conditioning units, etc.), and the supplier ensures that the requested power is available to the consumer. Of growing concern with respect to these types of power systems is the waste of non-renewable resources consumed by the power plants when producing electric power, as well as pollution generated by such plants. For instance, generators utilized in conventional power plants are not configured to allow for scaled output—that is, such generators are configured to output a constant amount of electric power, regardless of whether such power is being utilized by consumers. Scaling operation of a generator downward based upon an amount of requested power will potentially result in damage to the generator.
In an attempt to reduce carbon emissions and other pollutants caused by these conventional power systems, distributed power systems that employ renewable energy to generate electric power have been manufactured and deployed. These types of power systems include, but are not limited to, wind turbine farms, hydro-turbines, solar panel fields, geothermal power systems, and the like. While these systems offer a promising alternative to the conventional power grid, there are various deficiencies associated therewith. First, such types of systems generally output variable amounts of power over time (depending upon sunlight, cloud cover, wind, and the like), rendering it difficult to meet changing demands of consumers. Additionally, these types of systems tend to be less efficient than the conventional power systems that burn fossil fuels, and the cost of building such systems on a wide scale tends to be relatively high. Further, such systems remain centralized in that if a natural disaster or other unexpected event causes one of such systems to be disabled, numerous consumers that are provided with power generated by such systems would be negatively impacted.
To overcome at least some of the deficiencies set forth above, microgrids have been theorized, wherein a microgrid comprises at least one independently owned electric power source that is configured to provide electric power to at least one consumer in an area that is local to the source of the electric power. Pursuant to an example, a homeowner can attach photovoltaic cells to the rooftop of her home. Additionally, the homeowner may have a storage device (a capacitor bank, a series of batteries, etc.) that is configured to capture electric power generated by the photovoltaic cells that is not consumed by the homeowner at the time that the electric power is generated, thereby allowing electric power retained in the storage device to be later retrieved when desired. Currently, designing a microgrid is an inexact science, often with a designer of the microgrid having to guess as to the equipment that will be needed to provide a suitable amount of power to a home, a building, a base, or other region served by the power source of the microgrid.